Mascara is a major cosmetic product, of significant importance to the cosmetic industry. Mascara is a composition utilized to enhance the beauty of a person's eyes by coating eyelashes, and in some cases, eyebrows, to make them more attractive by providing color and body. Mascaras usually contain lipids such as waxes, oils, or fats, pigments for color, water, thickeners, surface active agents, humectants and alcohol. Most current mascara products are designed to deposit and fix a mixture of waxes, colors and solvents onto the eyelashes by a variety of methods, typically by specially designed brushes. The deposited film adds color, and by virtue of the film deposited, make the lashes appear thicker and longer.
Over the years there have been a number of developments to improve the look and feel of mascara. Various film forming polymers have been used in mascara to improve the mascara's durability and resistance to water and tears.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,697,643 to Sheperd, et al. discloses the use of hydrophilic acrylate and methacrylate polymers in various cosmetics, for the purposes of, among other things, overcoming the tendency of mascara to run when wet, and, in other cosmetics such as hair sprays, to set hair of any type.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,423,031 to Murui, et al. discloses an aqueous emulsion of at least one copolymer of one or more C.sub.4 to C.sub.18 alkyl acrylates and one or more C.sub.1 to C.sub.4 alkyl methacrylates. This copolymer emulsion may be used instead of waxes, lipids or oils in mascara for water resistance, and resistance to rubbing.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,988,502 to Ounanian, et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,013,543 to Mercado, et al. use water soluble polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and polyvinylacetate (PVA) as film forming resins in mascara instead of waxes, lipids, and oils.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,053,221 to Robertson et al. discloses a non-flaking, soapy water removable mascara composition which is an aqueous dispersion of an anionic polyester polymer derived from an aromatic dicarboxylic acid and aliphatic or cycloaliphatic glycol residues, in addition to microsphere particles.
As far as the present inventors are aware, neither these nor other previous mascara preparations are designed to or include any ingredient for holding the eye lashes in a curled position and retaining that curl.